Come Whatever Storms

The battered shopping cart muttered with a squeaky rattle as John Courtland pushed it down the center line of Interstate 95. Beneath his hands, the cracked plastic wrapper around the handle that once read Welcome to Martin’s! now scratched against his palms. Faded advertisements flashed up at him blindly from the flap in the basket’s upper seat. Sunlight winked off the parts of the cart’s steel grid which hadn’t yet begun to rust.

Inside the basket, an old battered baseball bat stood against the back of the seat, handle up as if waiting to be held and swung. A ball-peen hammer clattered against the seat as the cart bumped along the asphalt road, and a pair of long-handled wire cutters resting in the basket’s belly joined in the chorus. If Court had to listen to the cacophony for much longer, he was pretty sure it’d drive him crazy.

Too late for that, kid,his mind whispered. After the summer you’ve had, if you ain’t crazy yet, there’s something seriously wrong with you.

True that. It was late September now, the summer tucked into the past, where Court would leave it if he could. But the sun beating down on him still held a summery heat, warming the top of his head and making his scalp itch. Already a fine sheen of sweat coated his back, making his T-shirt stick to his skin, though it couldn’t be much later than ten in the morning. Virginia heat was the worst, Court thought, wiping a forearm against his brow. With a slight twinge of annoyance in his voice, he asked, “Hot enough for you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Beside Court, Adam Allison trudged along with one hand held up over his wire-frame glasses to shield his eyes from the sun. The man was in his late thirties, same as Court, and still built like a college linebacker. It wasn’t diet or exercise—it was genetics, plain and simple. The guy had never tossed a pigskin in his life. In his previouslife, rather, the one before this past summer. When he shrugged, his shoulders moved like boulders beneath his T-shirt. “I mean, really. What if I said no?”

“I’d say you’re crazy,” Court replied. If he could call it, that meant he wasn’t crazy himself, right?

Wrong—takes one to know one,a voice inside his head replied. It sounded suspiciously like his mother.

The shopping cart continued to jitter over the asphalt, noisy as he pushed it along the empty stretch of highway. Court forces his mother out of his mind. “How hot do you want it to be?”

Adam sighed and mopped away the sweat beading on his cheeks. “I don’t have much say in the matter, do I?”

Suddenly Court raised his face up to the sky and shouted, “Hey! You! Dial it back a little, will you? We’re roastinghere!”

Adam elbowed him in the ribs. “Hush,” he warned, as if afraid someone up there might decide to answer.

“I’m just saying,” Court started, but the shopping cart struck a small stone and jerked hard to the left. He struggled to keep it from overturning or getting away from him. “Fuck.”

“See what I mean?” Adam asked.

“Why do I always have to get the one with the bad wheel?” Court muttered. “Piece of shit…”

Adam grunted, but Court couldn’t tell if he agreed or what. Before Court could ask, a hot hand touched his arm, just below where the sleeve of his T-shirt brushed his elbow. “Hold up. I see something.”

Court looked up ahead, where the interstate curved away around a blind corner—one of those narrow switchback roads for which the mountains in this part of the state were famous. He squinted and thought he saw a flash of light up ahead—could’ve been anything, really—but he knew what it was. Sunlight off a chrome fender. Bingo.

“I see it. What do you think we’ve got?”

As usual, Adam answered Court’s question with one of his own. “Ronnie said two cars, didn’t he?”

“I know what Ronnie said,” Court started, but he bit back the rest of the words before they could tumble free. I was the one he said it to, remember?

Earlier that morning, Court woke to find tent mate Ronnie Densch sitting Indian-style on his sleeping bag. Ronnie was fully dressed despite the early hour, and snacked on a granola or energy bar as he watched Court. The thought that Ronnie had nothing better to do—or rather, wanted nothing better to do—than watch Court wake in the morning made his heart ache. When Court asked how long he’d been up, Ronnie just shrugged. To the question of what was he eating, Ronnie handed the last few bites of the bar to his friend, who chewed slowly, as if savoring the taste Ronnie’s lips and teeth and tongue had left behind.